


Comforts of a Storyteller

by Experiment_X4d2



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Gen, Hawke & Varric Tethras Friendship, Heartbreak, How Do I Tag, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Leandra Hawke Dies, Mental Anguish, Purple Hawke, Varric Tethras is a Good Friend, Varric Tethras' Nicknames
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 09:00:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15312030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Experiment_X4d2/pseuds/Experiment_X4d2
Summary: After facing down Quentin and losing her mother, Leandra; Misrann Hawke sits alone in her room as the last Hawke alive. In her grief, she pushes her friends away from her, even the Dalish woman she loves.Sometimes it doesn't matter what someone says.Sometimes you just need the right person to say nothing at all.





	Comforts of a Storyteller

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! Amateur writer here. This fic was originally posted on a (Now Dead) account on FF, and I wanted to bring it to AO3.
> 
> I'm first to admit I'm no pro, and my writing has turned better if I write PoVs in the last few years; but this one always sat with me.  
> So, without further ado, please (Hopefully) enjoy this tale! Or don't, it's angsty; so yeah. :P
> 
> Be patient with me, I haven't written properly in a fair while ^^;

* * *

 

_**'I love you. You've always made me so proud.'** _

_**'So you're to blame?! If you'd have been quicker, or stronger, you could've… she could be…'** _

 

Eve had fallen over Kirkwall, the days events still heavy on her shoulders. On her mind. His face, his voice, his very existence burned into the back of her brain; that bastard Quentin…

Misrann Hawke sat on the edge of her bed; starring down into the nothingness that lay between her feet. Her friends and companions had come to offer their condolences, try to help her through the darkness of the day’s events, yet none could split through the shadows that had lain siege to her thoughts.

Almost everyone had come to her. Their sympathies, their words, their aid… none of them could break through. And so she turned them away.

Reluctantly or apprehensively, they had accepted her wishes and left her to her thoughts; the Hawke estate returning once again to the bitter silence as they shut the front door.

Anders, Fenris, Isabela, Merrill. They had all tried. She had turned them all away.

 

Her charcoal hair sat flat and shaggy atop her hair, dusting her nose every now and then as she breathed; unkempt and in desperate need of a bath. Her eyes, once shining emeralds despite always appearing slightly ‘Tired’ or hollow; their depths somehow enough to stir the heart of her dear Merrill, gazed cold and dead to the floor. 

She didn’t know when she forced the tears to end, but the bloodshot edges of her eyes told that it wasn’t long ago.

Merrill in-particular wished to help her love, of course she did. The dainty elf always wanted to help her Vhenan, always wanted to be there to make sure Hawke was safe. Elven words, spun softly from her as she wandered to Misrann’s side; words intended to comfort and soothe… yet they served only to reignite the smouldering ashes within her heart.

A raw anger, a dark roiling fury that the witty Hawke never tapped into; her eyes burning, hands literally starting to burn as she yelled out.

 

* * *

“I heard the news…” Merrill’s soft voice shattered the silence as she entered the room.

Of course… Misrann had ran after Quentin with Varric, Isabela and Anders hadn’t she. Her neck cocked as she dared to turn her attention towards the Elf, as if stiff and stuck for days.

“Ir abelas, ma vhenan.”

She heard the words, but didn’t understand them. Hawke usually loved to wonder what things meant in other languages; it was one of the reasons her and Fenris got closer; after finding out he spoke Qunlat. But today, they angered her.

“I don’t speak Elven, Merrill.”

“I am filled with sorrow. For your loss.” Came from her again, the dalish girl approaching Misrann with hope in her eyes. “Leandra is in a better place now…”

 

Those words had tipped her over. Misrann had always been a calm, collected and cocky soul; Varric and Isabela were two of her closest friends because of how the three would laugh and drink the Hanged Man dry on Saturdays.

But today, she wasn’t that person.

She was angry.

With Merrill, with Gamlen, with Quentin…

But mostly with herself.

Those words though… “She’s in a better place”, they had tipped her over the edge, crossed the line she never even knew she’d drawn in the sand. She didn’t want to, but her mind wasn’t in the right place. She glared up at her lover, rising to her feet and quickly closing the gap between them with an intimidating baring of her teeth.

“A better place? A Better Place?! Mother shouldn’t BE in a Better Place, Merrill! She should be HERE!”

Hawke’s strides forward were returned with instinctive, fearful steps backwards from the elf, her voice shaking in her throat. Hawke was powerful, anyone stupid enough to deny it was also stupid enough to give her a reason to correct them; but she was a good person, the only people who had to fear her were the people who had reason to.

 

Until that day.

 

“I-i… I-I’m s-sorry, Vhenan! I-I only meant-…”

“Only meant what, Merrill?! That she’s with the Maker?!” Hawke bellowed, hindsight telling her that every Dwarf and Dog within the estate could hear her and were frightfully wishing they could leave.

“O- Or… or Falon’din…?”

“I DON’T GIVE A FUCK MERRILL!” She roared, flames roiling around her fists; her eyes smouldering with a fury she had seen only on Anders or Fenris. “Mother is DEAD! She is Dead! I Fucked up, what more is there to say?!”

Her back to the wall, her elven love could only shudder as she watched this Hawke bare wrath down in her gaze. Tears streamed down her face, quaking hands covering her mouth to try and stop the sobs.

“I’m Sorry!” Was all she got out, before she sprinted out of the room.

 

The last thing Hawke heard of Merrill that night was the slamming of the front door.

 

* * *

A low sigh left her. She had lost enough that day and she hated what she had become in those moments… knowing that her actions had threatened, perhaps succeeded, in losing her Merrill all together.

After the flames and the silence both died down, Bodahn had come into the room; very uncomfortably requesting that he and Sandal leave the estate for the night, to leave her to herself.

An offhand wave was her response.

That left the Hawke estate to its last two residents and the depths of discomfort that followed the hollow house. The cracking of cinders in the fireplace downstairs that… that Leandra herself had lit… and the occasional snore of the Mabari in front of it.

 

With her door closed, that left only Hawke. In all the years in Kirkwall, she had never been so alone.

No Mother…

No Merrill.

No…

One… door opened.

 

The sound was enough to perk her ears, but not enough to turn her head. It shut soon after it opened, probably Isabela there to steal something and leave without being noticed.

She would’ve ignored it entirely, if it weren’t for the heavy leathered footsteps making their way up her stairs. She could hear them through the walls, stopping before her door and gently opening it to the short moments of noise from the foyer; before returning to the silence as they shut it behind them.

Something shifted in her peripheral hearing, culminating in a muffled, yet oddly recognisable clunk as something plopped down heavily onto her bedroom floor, right beside her door.

It was Bianca. Leant against the wall, her infamous owner leant against the doorframe; arms crossed at the wrists loosely near his belt.

He said nothing.

 

The silence cut sharper and deeper than anything her other companions had said or done during the entire course of the night. For she knew the Dwarf that sat at her door, and silence was not a song he sang.

It was enough to get her to look at him.

Knowing the Dwarf for so many years, she was so used to a suave smirk on the face of her best friend, a cutthroat lie and a story of glory and riches to raise spirits and bring back the good times.

Yet the look on his face said so much more than anything else. It was a soft expression, stoic and sympathetic.

That was the word. Sympathetic. Of all of her other friends, she felt the looks were more of pity; kind words spun with a pitying gaze that made her feel numb.

But the Dwarf offered something more and she understood why. Over the years of being the best of friends and making Kirkwall their playground, Misrann and Varric would talk about anything and everything; Dark, sad or otherwise.

When Bartrand went berserk, Varric didn’t speak much of it afterwards. Out loud, at least. The group would still play Wicked Grace, have a drink of something stiff and everyone thought the Dwarf was coping. But Misrann knew the Dwarf; she saw the way he played his hands with less drive and more reluctance; held his cards with a weakness. 

She asked. And he answered. She was there for him.

And now, it was his turn.

 

“Daisy’s pretty burned out, Hawke. Came runnin’ into the Hanged Man, was cryin’ all over mine and Rivaini’s game of Wicked Grace; damn ruined the table. Took me twenty minutes to convince ’er not to come up here and ‘Cut your tits off’. I don’t think anyone wants that.”

Misrann spoke no words. What she had said, done to Merrill, it was inexcusable.

“But… neither you, nor her, are in the best states of mind right now, so… that’s why they’re sharing a drink, and I’m here.”

“I made her cry…”

“I know…”

Leather skated across the floor once again, the Dwarf sauntering over towards the Mage and leaning against the bedpost, looking down to her.

“I’m not here expecting my words to just magically fix this. I’m good, but every good story needs time to tell itself.”

Misrann’s gaze turned back to the floor, silence choking the room again; something that hadn’t happened between the two banterers in so many long years.

“I was too late…”

“There wasn’t a way to be ‘On Time’ to what we saw down there, Missy.” Missy. That was the nickname Hawke had been granted by the esteemed writer; after a rousing chat about how she must’ve been half elf with a name like that. “That goes beyond Blood Magic…”

“I failed…”

“Failing would’ve been leaving her there with Quentin, to do… Maker, I don’t wanna think. We were there, Hawke, I was there. I heard what she said to you. She was gone and you saved her from… that. That isn’t failure in my books.”

“But-…”

“Y’know, a really good friend of mine once said ‘The worst Fuck-up you can ever make, is to think bad in a bad situation’, and she’s no slouch. Likes her words of wisdom, makes her feel big an’ important like some sage or some shit.”

 

Misrann breathed the first smile she had mustered all day. Lost in the dregs of guilt, only the Dwarf had managed to stir something out of her.

“Don’t keep bad in, in a bad time, Missy. If you’re gonna let loose, don’t do it on Daisy. Do it on me.”

He stepped forward, standing barely half a step in front of where she sat; his bold chest just below-level with her chin.

Finally, she looked up to him, her bloodshot eyes starting to quiver as she gazed into that stern expression that only he could offer her at that time. Her fists clenched in her lap, her emotions flowing through everything that had spanned not only that day, but over the many years she had faced since Lothering. Events passed by, each faced with a strong will and a stride for progress; each one pushed aside, stacked up and left to fester, more and more until today came and sent the tower crashing down in a barrage of Fire and Hatred. The images, the screams; not of those she had killed, not even those who could have been saved.

But of those she had Tried to save… and had failed to.

Faces, voices, whispers bellowing, screams on the winds of the expanse of her own consciousness; with all the death she had sown across Kirkwall, with the extravagance of the reaping she had wrought, three sat at the forefront of her mind’s eye.

Their faces rekindled the embers, their voices stoked their flames, their final screams echoing as the flames grew higher and higher. Tears streaming down her face, her body quaked as it all caught up to her. She had repressed and pushed it all back over the years because she couldn’t handle it, and now it all came crashing down at once.

 

“So let loose.”

She screamed. It broke in her throat as she slammed her fist into her chest; her head leant against it as he clenched her jaw to silence the grunt.

She was utterly heartbroken; sobbing back a torrential wave of tears, dampening his chest, his tunic and her face.

Another fist collided with him, it desperately muted in his low grunt as he let her break down. She had held in so much until that day, only Varric and a select few others knowing all of what she had faced; even some of her own inner circle kept in the dark on some points. But Varric knew every last event, every heart-wrenching action she’d had to face, and all he could do was stand there while she wept into his chest; wondering how long she would scream.

An arm rested against her shoulder as she leaned into him further, the pounding of her fists weakening to a degree he didn’t feel anymore. Physical Exhaustion, or maybe mental? Her left hand clenched onto his tunic’s side, desperately grasping for anything as he laid his chin into her scraggy locks.

“I’ve lo-lost them all… A-All of them!” She choked. “B-Bethany didn’t e-even make it here… C-Carver… died i-in the roads, a-a-and now M-Mother… To A MADMAN!”

Her right fist continued banging against him every now and then, if only to show that she still had some fight left in her, left clinging tightly as she leant into his arm. “I l-lost them all… a-and- and for WHAT?! T-To save Myself?! T-To get… some Fucking Treasure! I tried… I-I t- I tried… t-to save them a-all…”

 

The minutes ticked away in the back reaches of the foyer, time gone in the room between the two. In time, the dying strength in her fist shattered all together, loosening her hand and splaying it across his chest; her short nailed digging into him enough to register and leave a groove in his skin.

Five nails turned to four. Four to two, and finally two to none; her hand covering her mouth to try to silence a sob as it broke through her fingers, the other eventually leaving his shirt and joining its sister.

“I tr- I tried t-to save them…”

She leant fully into his arm as the other rested on her other shoulder; bringing his friend into a close embrace. She was shuddering in his arms, every gasping sob shaking her to her core.

 

“I pr- I promised… I’d k-keep them safe…”

 

**“I Promised!”**

 

“I know, Hawke.”

 

I know…


End file.
